She laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need anyone’s spells but yours, my dear.”
Pleased, the Ifrit picked her up and planted a kiss on top of her head that left her wiping saliva off her hair.
“All of you probably want some food,” said the Ifrit, frowning and trying to count us. “How many of you are there, thirteen? It’s hard to keep track of such little beings.” I myself counted and, with Sir Hugo’s party, our party from Yurt, plus Kaz-alrhun, Maffi, and the Ifrit’s wife, got the same answer. “Well, get the fires started, my dear, and I’ll bring you a few more of the emir’s sheep.”
As the desert evening came on, cooling the clear air, I licked meat juices from my lips and looked across a valley that now had no sign of the emir’s soldiers in it. The Ifrit and his wife sat off to one side, apparently trading funny stories with each other, but the rest of us were gathered around the dying embers of the cooking fires.
“I guess all there is to do now is to get safely home,” said Hugo. He and his father sat together, their shoulders touching. “It’s strange, because the whole trip was painful and dangerous and frustrating, but now that it’s almost over I find myself wishing we could go on forever.”
I pictured the original six of us as we had set out in early spring, all the equipment which was now in the hands of the emir’s soldiers carefully packed on our horses, when our worst danger was the lord of the red sandstone castle, and when I had not yet discovered school magic in the spells of an evil king. I agreed with Hugo; I wished our trip was not ending but would continue forever.
But the thought of Yurt and the king’s garden, where he would soon be planting his new rose, was also abruptly sweet. The forested hills of Yurt would be turning yellow and red, and the air would have the tang of fresh apples.
“It’s going to be a long trip, even with a flying carpet,” commented Ascelin.
“Do you think you can get all of us onto your carpet?” Dominic asked Kaz-alrhun. “With it we’ll be able to cross the desert even without our horses and supplies. Let’s stop at that oasis, however, and see if my stallion is still where the boy left him! If we leave the two of you in Xantium, we can then fly on to the western kingdoms. I’m certain our wizard will be able to work the carpet’s spells.”
“If the carpet can get us over the mountains,” continued Ascelin, “we can go straight from Xantium to the great City and drop off Sir Hugo’s party there, and then the rest of us can continue on to Yurt. We’ll send the carpet back to you once we’re home.”
The chaplain nodded slowly. “Yes, it will make more sense for me come to Yurt with all of you at first. From there I’ll go on to the cathedral city of Caelrhon after a few days.”
I turned my head to stare at him. Joachim was wrapped up in his desert robes, and his dark eyes were shadowed, but he must have caught my expression. “Didn’t I tell you, Daimbert, before we left Yurt this spring? The bishop agreed that I should indeed make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the king. But as soon as we’re back I shall have to resign as royal chaplain and go to join the priests of the cathedral chapter.”
Then the home we were returning to would not be the home we had left. The Yurt I had always known was a kingdom with Joachim as royal chaplain. I reminded myself that I too was different, both in my knowledge and in my magic, and it didn’t help.
“So will you allow us to borrow your carpet,” Dominic said to Kaz-alrhun, “to get ourselves and King Solomon’s Pearl back to Yurt?”
Kaz-alrhun rolled his black eyes at him. “Are you certain it is as easy as that?”
“Why, are you worried about how we’ll share the Pearl’s powers if you stay in Xantium and we take it to Yurt?” Dominic frowned and looked toward the king. “I’m sure if you wanted to come to Yurt with us, then …”
Kaz-alrhun shook his head and looked briefly amused. “I mean that it will not be as easy to take the Pearl home with you as you seem to think. It is the way of God to raise up nothing of this world, except He cast it down again. For a while yet, the Pearl may continue to bring you your heart’s desire. But if you take it to Yurt now, spattered with the blood of a man killed for it, it will soon cease to make you prosper, and instead will put you under a curse that will blight your entire kingdom.”
VI
We met each other’s eyes in dismay. “Then take it to Xantium,” said Dominic.
Kaz-alrhun shook his head, still looking amused. “I want Xantium to continue to prosper, and I am already the greatest mage the city has ever known, even without the Pearl. It would have been an even greater triumph to be able to learn how to control its magic, but I did find it. I deliberately did not tell you to search the Wadi, did not touch the ruby with its opening spells, and stood back when you took the Pearl out of the cave. I knew its potential perils, and its curse should not touch me. I will not take it.”
“But what was I supposed to do?” Ascelin burst out. “Should I have stood by while King Warin tried to kill Dominic?”
“And should I have just told Ascelin to let Warin go, so that he would be accursed instead?” demanded Dominic.
“There was, after all, an excellent reason,” Kaz-alrhun replied, “why the caliph renounced the Pearl and all its powers a thousand years ago.”
Dominic took a deep breath and placed the Black Pearl on the sand in front of him. The smooth dark surface winked in the firelight. “Then I shall renounce it also,” he said after only the shortest pause. “Let it remain here with the Ifrit, or back within the Wadi where we found it.”
We were all silent for a moment, then Joachim said quietly, “In this fallen world, no man, even the wisest, could consistently do good if he could wield this much power. To lock it away may have been the wisest decision Solomon ever made.”
Dominic shrugged, as though trying to reestablish normalcy. “If there isn’t enough room on your carpet for all of us when we leave here, Mage, maybe we could put the overflow on your flying horse. Or is it your horse anymore?” he added with a forced chuckle. “Someone certainly has bought it from you by now, maybe the chaplain’s sister-in-law.”
We waited for Kaz-alrhun to answer, then I realized he was slowly shaking its head. “It is much too late to renounce the Black Pearl that easily. It was taken from its hiding place by a prince of Yurt, and after Warin stole it a duke of Yurt killed him to recover it. Its curse will affect Yurt whether it is with you or back in the Wadi.”
For a moment we sat in silence, trying to imagine a curse on Yurt: the green hills becoming parched, fires ravaging the fields, blizzards killing the livestock, the bandits who almost never bothered us appearing on the highways, fatal disease spreading and infecting the children, both the children of villagers and the children of kings and princes.
“There has to be a way,” said Dominic abruptly. “This is a flawless pearl, beyond all price. It was a gift to King Solomon from the Queen of Sheba, a gift to be treasured. If, as the mage says, blood and evil desires can pervert its magic, then there has to be a way to purify it again.”
I stared at the Pearl until its winking in the firelight set up a pattern within my brain, a pattern that suddenly made sense of that voice I had not quite been able to hear.
“There is a way,” I heard myself saying. “One of us will have to die.”
Kaz-alrhun’s eyes met mine. “You surprise me, Daimbert. I did not think a western wizard would understand that.”
“The Pearl itself told me.”
This startled him again.
“The Pearl must again be hidden,” I said as though someone else were speaking. “Inside its golden box, inside the locked cabinet, sunk in a derelict ship in the deepest rift of the Outer Sea. The Ifrit can take it there, and with it shall go someone of Yurt. Then the curse will be lifted. Yurt will not prosper so thoroughly as it would have, by the Pearl’s grace, if no one had been killed, but the free giving of a life will break the curse brought about by violent death. And if the Pearl is found again, in five years or five thousand, the finder may, if he keeps free of evil, find his heart’s desire.”